


S W O L E R V A

by persistent_pedantry



Series: The Collected Escapades of Minerva and René Galliard IV [10]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-18
Updated: 2018-04-18
Packaged: 2020-10-17 07:53:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20617562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persistent_pedantry/pseuds/persistent_pedantry
Summary: Minerva tries to go faster than the fastest Pokemon in existence. You can imagine how this went.





	S W O L E R V A

**Author's Note:**

> Despite its shitposty name, this was a fairly important piece. I was seeing how Minerva would be if she was a lot more dirty-mouthed; it didn't stick, but it was always worth checking. This was also another power balancing piece, much like Pressure or, to a point, To The Death. I still haven't fully balanced out Minerva, but at least my journey in doing so got some neat stories.
> 
> It was also where I got the idea of making the series in the X/Y games, Poké Ranger, that universe's JoJo's. Why? I still can't say, honestly.

_ **WELCOME TO SUPER TRAINING! YOUR NUMBER ONE WAY TO REACH THE ULTIMATE PEAK O—** _

“Yeah, yeah,” Minerva mutters, swiping the notification away. “Okay, René. What’re we training, here?”

“Speed. More specifically, your reflexes,” René answers, Minerva scowling at the Kalosian tone in her head.

“Is it because of that thing with the Ursaring?” She asks.

“Yes. Minerva, I still don’t believe you were fully sober in that battle.”

“Oh, I wasn’t. I had a big glass of ‘Shut The Fuck Up’ beforehand.”

“Very mature of you. You still need to train. You haven’t trained properly in months.”

Minerva sighs heavily, shrugging in reluctant agreement.

“I guess so. Alright, what’s the model?” She asks, looking around the vast blue plain.

Super Training is a weird thing, engineering by Lysandre Labs as a VR system of sorts for Pokémon. You just connect your Caster to the Poké Ball and you have a whole world for your making. While most people stick to the default Balloon Training regimens, there are more realistic battling scenarios, but they can take a lot of processing power and cost money to use.

At the moment, she stands in a blue plain, a huge grid lining the sky while the floor is a flat, dark grey, nearing black. There’s an option to have this huge stadium to cheer you on like you’re in the Pokémon Stadium or something, but she always had trouble with crowds. It’s a lot of social pressure, and even if she can avoid it, it’s still always too loud. People are just loud in general.

“Alright, it should be uploaded in about five seconds, Minerva,” René says, Minerva sighing with an impatient hop.

“Come on, come on. I wanna kill something already,” she complains, sighing again. Well, it’s more of an overly dramatic huff.

“Calm down, Blaze Girl.”

“Wait, was that a _Poké Ranger_ reference?”

“No.”

“WAS THAT A MOTHERFUCKING _POKÉ RANGER_ REFERENCE?”

“Okay, it’s up.”

”What the fuck!?”

Minerva stares at the dull orange figure, its arms intertwined with blue and yellow cords. The two stand roughly twenty feet apart, but the gridded floor makes it seem like a lot further. Maybe that’s why Minerva doesn’t believe what she sees: she just needs glasses.

“René, do I need glasses? Do you need glasses? That’s a goddamn Deoxys.”

She’s right. A Speed Forme Deoxys stood those twenty feet before her, hunched over and giving her that ‘I’m Better Than You’ stare that Legendary Pokémon really like. At least, that’s her experience in the whole two Legendaries she’s come across.

“That is a Deoxys, yes,” René replies, currently sitting at a table in Aquacorde Town, waiting on a cup of coffee. He wasn’t physically speaking, given that they speak telepathically just as much as he speaks to her normally, so he didn’t look like some nut-job talking to himself. “I did say that you needed training on your reflexes, and I remember you talking about wanting to fight a Legendary Pokémon.”

“That was like four months ago! I’ve fought a Hydregion since then!”

“That’s not a Legendary, Minerva.”

“What?”

“That’s a pseudo-Legendary.”

“I have no idea what that is.”

“Neither do I, but that’s what it is, apparently. I’ll ask Alexandre. In the meantime: enjoy.”

As soon as René had finished speaking, it blurs, reappearing behind Minerva without a word.

“_Nani_—“ Minerva begins in an attempt at a joke, soon being cut off by being thrown across the floor. After a good ten seconds of rolling, she slowly gets up, frowning. Okay, that was a dick move. Slowly rising to her feet, Minerva eyes Deoxys carefully, taking a single step before she vanishes. Barely a second later, Deoxys crashes to the ground, wisps of a Shadow Ball dissipating from its head.

“_Se faire baiser_,” Minerva jibes, skipping back to flicker a second time, narrowly avoiding the Deoxys’ charge in retaliation.

The dance of dodge to retaliation is a long one, Minerva nor Deoxys letting up in any regard. While Minerva could throw a Shadow Ball at Deoxys every now and then, it would dodge it with ease and follow up with an attack of its own, which Minerva had frequent trouble in avoiding. She rarely even gets a chance to recuperate and ready Hypnosis.

Ten minutes pass, and Minerva collapses, panting desperately for breath as she stares blankly into the vast expanse of gridded sky. The Deoxys faded into nothing only moments ago, leaving Minerva to focus on not dying from exhaustion. She isn’t even slightly used to exerting herself for that long, especially to that level. Most of the time, perhaps if she’s against a particularly annoying Sneasel, it’ll take her four, five minutes to finish the fight. Even then, the speed of Deoxys’ Speed Forme is obviously nothing like she’s seen before.

“You did well, Minerva. I didn’t think it would be that fast, if I’m honest, but you were only hit twice. That’s commendable, if nothing,” René explains, his voice resounding in the back of her mind like always.

“Two... times... too many,” Minerva replies, even her telepathy speaking in pants. That’ll happen when you rely on speech via telepathy: you start picking up quips.

“You still did well, Minerva. Much better than I expected. Alright, let’s get you out of there to get some lunch.”

Thank God.

The gridded world begins to flicker, plunging Minerva into a sheer blackness. Nothing happens for a short while. Small green lights floating around the abyss, Minerva observing them tiredly. They’re for recalibrating your brain, apparently. Your equalbrum. Is that it? Equal... Equil... Equilbrum sounds sort of ri—

Minerva snaps awake, the burning in her lungs snatched away with refreshed vigour to complement.

“Equilibrium, Minerva. It controls the motor skills of the brain such as balance, hand-eye coordination, general bodily awareness,” René explans, watching Minerva appear in a bright silver flash as he places down his coffee. He places away the Hunter Ball, brushing a thumb over the black upper side to remove the stain that the Super Training module left. It’s a little suction cup of sorts, so it leaves those annoying little coffee cup-like stains.

“Cool,” Minerva mumbles, groaning lowly as she rests a hand on the side of her face, resting her head against it. The change from VR to reality has always thrown her off; much like jet lag, really. “So, is that the training done for this month, this year, or—?”

“This week,” René replies, placing the Holo Caster back in his coat pocket. “We’re stepping up your training dramatically to accord to some new contracts I’ve got my hands on.”

If Minerva had a voice, she would be groaning until her lungs were sapped. Happily, since she doesn’t need to speak, she can fully articulate her emotions through telepathy:

”Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurgh _enculé_.”


End file.
